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1952: Giro and Tour again
After all the accidents and the tragedy occurred in 1951, Coppi wants a
better year and works hard to make things go better.
He trains carefully and starts racing very soon, in the Six Days of Paris taking place in March.
He comes second in the Paris-Roubaix: he first leads a fascinating
sprint with Kubler and Van Steenbergen, then looses the very final sprint against the Belgian rider, Van Steenbergen. ()
Then it's the turn of the Giro d'Italia, starting on May 17th. In the
fifth stage - a time trial stage- he already wears the Maglia Rosa but the most important part of this Giro -- as it has happened in the past -- takes place in mountains. Coppi sprints ahead in the stage going from
Venice to Bolzano, through the passes of Falzarego, Pordoi and Sella. Geminiani and Koblet try to keep Coppi's pace in vain. Coppi arrives to Bolzano with a leap of 5 minutes on Bartali and Magni and 5 minutes and
50 seconds on Geminiani and the others.
Coppi wins another time trial stage and wins his fourth Giro d'Italia,
while his team-mate Geminiani, wins the Gran Premio della Montagna.
Now comes the Tour. Because of a series of controversies between Coppi
and Bartali, the authorities starts thinking about excluding all the Italian competitors from the race. Fortunately Binda (the Italian National Team manager) composes the fights and the Italian team is admitted to
the Tour.
Once again, the result of the race depends on the stages in the
mountains. Coppi is the leader of all the stages in the Alps: he wins the first one, with the climb of the Alpe d'Huez. He wins again in Switzerland and the stage going from Bourg d'Oisans to Sestričre, leaving the
second behind for 7 minutes and Bartali, the third, for more than 10 minutes.
In the same year Fausto Coppi repeats the exploit winning the Giro and
the Tour being the first man in the world to achieve such a result.
Bad luck does not abandon him: in August he falls during a track-race and breaks the left shoulder blade.
He comes back to the races in October, just in time to win the Lugano
Grand Prix, a time trial race and the Mediterranean Grand Prix, a road-race in stages located in the South of Italy.
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